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Monday 30 January 2012

A case of Hidradenitis Suppurativa

CA is 43 years old, and she had suffered from Hidradenitis Suppurativa (HS), mainly in her groin area, for over 15 years. During that time she had a multiplicity of conventional treatment, including several operations to remove the lesions, a hysterectomy, and she said she had taken innumerable doses of anti-biotics. But nothing that conventional medicine did made the condition any better. Indeed, by the winter of 2010, CA said that she was worse than she has ever been.

HS is a chronic skin condition which appears primarily on the arm-pits, breasts, and groin. It is an inflammatory condition of the sweat glands, and the lesions are often deep-seated, and very painful nodules.

The hospital had told her there was no other treatment that they could offer her. And when she asked her GP for a referral to a homeopath she was refused (as normally happens in 'our' drug-oriented NHS).

So on a bitterly cold December day, in 2010, just over a year ago, CA came to see me, and we began the voyage to recovery. One year later, in December 2011, CA wrote this to me in an email.

"Isn't it fantastic that my body is learning how to deal with the hidradenitis! I'm over the moon".

What had caused this dramatic cure? The homeopathic remedy Elaps Corallinus, with a little help from Medhorrinum, a homeopathic nosode, and initially, some Penicillinum, to counter some of the anti-biotics she had taken over the years. 

Why this remedy? First, the remedy has been used successfully for this condition before. Second, CA's physical symptoms matched closely with the remedy description. But most important, CA told me during our discussion that "she liked her own company, liked isolation, and felt she was 'forced' to live in society". This matched descriptions of Elaps, the the Homeopathic Materia Medica - that people who needed the remedy had 'a desire for solitude'. When there is a close match between both physical and emotional symptoms, I have found that the remedy is usually successful.

And Elaps worked well from the beginning, although for a time it never cleared the condition completely, or prevented a series of 'relapses'. After all, this condition was 15 years old, and was by this time well established. It was not going to disappear overnight - not even with the power of homeopathy! We had to play around a little with potency; I thought she would respond best to high potency but she was best on repeated low-to-moderate potencies. Then, sometimes, the remedy did not work as well as we expected; something seemed to be 'getting in the way' - hence the use of one of the major miasmatic nosodes, Medhorrinum, to clear the path to allow Elaps to work better.

And gradually, the remedy did work. New lesions did not grow so big; they were not so painful, and they did not re-occur so regularly. Each time there was a relapse I asked CA to take either Medhorrinum or Elaps. 

And then, eventually, there was CA's comment - which came after my suggestion that she should see, with the next relapse, whether her body had learnt to correct itself without a remedy.

As a case example, this is not remarkable or even unusual. Homeopathy works powerfully once the 'correct'. closely matching remedy has been found. Yet many questions arise from it.

* Why did conventional medicine treat her for 15 years - entirely without success?
* Why did the NHS not refer CA to other medical therapies and treatments, even when she asked for this to be done?
* Why did the NHS refuse to pay for CA's treatment, especially when they had nothing else to offer her, and told her so?

Certainly, the NHS has failed CA. The blind commitment of the NHS to one type of medicine, even when that treatment does not work for 15 years, is a clear demonstration that the NHS has been taken over by a medical elite that have formed a medical monopoly. 

Moreover, it has created a medical monopoly that prefers patients to suffer rather than to open itself up to other medical therapies.